Usually I’m not a fan of Halloween. It’s more American habit than European, I thought. But it’s not true! Today my hairdresser told me the history of that, click here if You want to know more about it, interesting.
When my elder son came home from school at the end of September and was talking about they had prepared halloween cakes, and halloween drawings, and halloween mask I was getting suspicious this year we had to make our own Halloween at home as well, including baking cakes and muffins decorated with spiders or other symbols.
The idea to make cake pops came from Rachel Allen’s, Cake book. But I made some changes in her recipe. For example I add some apricot jam (or marmalade) to the mixture beside chocolate. And I reduced the amount of cake from 350 gr to 250 gr.
Ingredients:
Serves 12 cake-pops
cc 200-250 gr leftover Madeira cake, or sponge cake
100 gr milk chocolate, dark chocolate or white chocolate roughly chopped
1 tbsp apricot jam
for the coating:
100 gr white chocolate (few drops food color is optional)
100 gr dark or milk chocolate
1 box cc 78 gr poppy candy or sugar crystals
and 12 pieces lollipop sticks
The main rules of making lovely cake pops :
- cake pop mixture don’t be too runny because can not be shaped into balls
- 30 minutes in fridge is a minimum required time to set, otherwise the ball will fall dawn off the sticks before serving
- melted chocolate for coating be tempered
Crumble the cake in a bowl. Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water and mix with cake and jam. Stir them with spoon or fork, and then with fingers. Shape the batter into 12 balls then push the sticks halfway so try to avoid to push to top otherwise the ball will fall down before serving.
Line a baking sheet with baking parchment. Place the balls on that and keep in fridge at least 30 minutes to firm up.
After 20 minutes You can start prepare chocolate coating. Place white chocolate in a heatproof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water, stirring occasionally until melted. Remove from the heat.
Remove 6 cake pops from fridge and dip each in chocolate dip and coat perfectly. You can use a spoon as well to help cover all around. Put the candy or crystals into a small bowl. Remove chocolate excess and then dip the cake pops into candy. Insert cake pops into a polystyrene block, or jar or lay on baking sheet. Place somewhere cool but not in fridge and leave to set.
To make coating for the remaining 6 cake pops, melt the milk chocolate in the same way and dip cake pops in that, and then into candy. Leave to set and serve cool.
